Create, Innovate & Evaluate in Higher Education

Sustainability and MOOCs in Historical Perspective

November 15, 2012

by Stephen Downes
Keynote presentation delivered to Simposio Internacional Estado Actual Y Prospectiva De La Educacion Virtual, Bogota, Colombia.

Overview of the historical factors leading to the development of massive open online courses, and discussion of what this history can tell us of the sustainability of MOOCs in the future. 

 

Massive open online courses are the educational happening of the moment. Everyone wants in. No one is quite sure what they’re getting into.

 

IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing interns and “edX fellows” — grad students and postdocs versed in online education — were translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would “go live.”

 

The MOOCs are also generating a massive amount of MOOC Resources:

http://www.worldofwebcast.com/post/massive-list-of-mooc-resources-lit-and-literati

 

Creative Commons says MOOCs should be kept "Open" in a couple of senses:

The original MOOCs…were “open” in two respects. First, they were open enrollment to students outside the hosting university. That is open as in “open registration.” Second, the materials of the course were licensed using Creative Commons licenses so their materials could be remixed and reused by others. That is open as in “open license.”

Continue reading at: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/34852

 

Also there are some experiences puzzled togehter in The Guardian:

Learning for free online

Distance learning is increasingly popular and one of the reasons is the growing number of free courses being offered online

Continue reading here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/oct/23/free-online-distance-learning?INTCMP=SRCH

 

The MIT Technology Review says:

MOOCs are

The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years

Students anywhere are being offered free instruction online. What will that do to the trillion-dollar education business?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506351/the-most-important-education-technology-in-200-years/

Las mejores universidades se lanzan a ofrecer cursos sin coste en Internet.

Los llamados "massive open Online courses" han supuesto un salto cualitativo en el elearning. Abanderados por las mejores universidades americanas han abierto un nuevo debate: estamos al final de la concepción clásica de la universidad???
PASEN, vean, participen.... Son gratis

A comment by Jason Green on twitter got me thinking again about a different lens through which to see the MOOC. The book, and particularly the textbook, are at the core of many of our classrooms. There’s no denying that having the content for a course all tied up in a handy, portable, near unbreakable format is convenient. Proof of this can be found in the fact that the yearly slaying of trees, organizing of content, printing and ordering of books and queuing in the bookstore to purchase them are almost as strong today as it was 30 years ago. Surely some people (I’m looking at you Cable Green) have encouraged a move towards taking those books online, but many of those models replicate much of the ‘prepare, organize and buy’ models of the paper book industry while saving trees and avoiding fleecing the student. Those books are still, however, finite and finished.

The LMS Instructure Enters the MOOC Fray

by Audrey Watters on 31 Oct, 2012

Not content with being the young upstart in the LMS industry taking on the aging giants of Blackboard and Desire2Learn, Instructure has now decided to enter another market and take on some of the upstarts there, namely Coursera and edX. That is, tonight it launches the Canvas Network, which in the words of CEO Josh Coates, is “our answer to the whole MOOC hype.”

It’s an answer that Instructure’s current clients have helped devise, too, Coates says, noting that many of the schools that run its LMS Canvas are pondering that hype and weighing whether they should join the Coursera or edX platform (or fear being left out of the MOOC race entirely). In many cases, these schools already offer online classes to their own students, but simply don’t have the reach — the marketing reach or the instructional reach — that the xMOOCs promise.

There’s a whole new language being developed around the hottest trend in education: online learning. From MOOCs (like a cow would say it but with a hard K at the end) to OpenCourseWare to ‘21st century learning‘ … there’s a lot of new terms you should know about.

In recent weeks, there has been much energy and enthusiasm about both MITx and its multi-institutional counter part edX. Listening to the debate over how MITx can be integrated into the residential experience, I am impressed by how much thought all affected parties have invested. We as a community are at a crossroads. We have been presented with an opportunity to substantially change what it means to receive a college education. This possibility excites me, but for others it may seem slightly frightening. Many people are concerned about what we may lose in the process of integrating online education into our current system. While these concerns are certainly valid, I am still optimistic. Rather than focus on how MITx might harm, I focus on how it can transform. What follows is my vision of how this transformation might play out.